paris

In most of my encounters with Paris, I have tried not to come across as a tourist. I’ve failed, of course; even when I try to speak French, I’m a sore thumb the moment I open my mouth. Recently, I’ve enjoyed recasting myself as a mystery tourist – too polite to be American, yet too…

I am sitting upstairs in Café Verlet, a fancy salon de thé about a block from the Louvre. Outside, snow trickles onto hats and umbrellas, but inside the heat is cranked way up. As my waitress brings me my cat-poop coffee, she checks to make sure I am not too hot. “No, no,” I say,…

Is there any form of transport more civilized than rail? You might not think it, to travel by train in Canada, where our ambitious, continent-spanning rail empire has shriveled down to a smattering of grungy, truck-stop stations linked by shabby trains with erratic, unhelpful timetables. Here in Europe, it takes only a small taste to…

“You finally got me to Paris,” Says my daughter teasingly as we emerge from the warren of corridors that connect Gare de Lyon with half a dozen Métro lines and RER stations. She has a point; we’ve been living in France for five months, and I’ve made several daytrips from Lille, but P hasn’t been…

One of the reasons we chose Lille as our sabbatical home is its position as carrefour – a crossroads, or jumping-off point to northern Europe. Lille is in the northernmost part of France, and thanks to Europe’s excellent high-speed train network, it’s within 2 hours’ travel of Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Cologne and Frankfurt, and…

The Itinerary: 7h00: Up and about, breakfast and teeth, check my checklist for a daytrip to the Big City! 8h15: Walk X to school. His mom just got him a scooter, so he’ll be fully occupied with keeping his balance on the cobblestones. Tell him S will pick him up. 8h30: My train leaves at…